MAD to LAX

Well, I’m back.

It is early in the morning, at home. At 5:30 am, with my first cup of tea in hand as I breathe in deeply and simply listen, the rest of the City of Angels seems asleep still. It is covered with a fluffy blanket of grey clouds, and it looks strangely snug under it.

It has been quite the trip, as you may have gathered from the past several posts. I managed to get a great deal done in that last day or two, as I was planning when I last reported in. This included more food, jazz, some flamenco in two unexpected but fascinating settings, the excellent collection at Reina Sophia (focused mostly on Picasso), and more.

I’ll try to tell you some of it in the next few days.

But now I must focus on being back. I spent a long day travelling back from MAD to LAX yesterday and need to recover and get on with business immediately. There is a final big lecture for my Electromagnetism class to write and deliver, for example. All about Special Relativity and how it is intimately embedded in E&M, and what the consequences are for some of the things we’ve already studied in the class, and much more. Or something along those lines. Need to think about it. It will be a three hour lecture (making up for me not getting back early on Tuesday due to hugely expensive tickets over the Thanksgiving travel return weekend running into Monday), with a break of course, and the length ought to mean it should be fun to delve into the material and settle in for a bit.

Also, I have to decide whether to immediately get back into TV mode. There’s a new talent show on a big TV channel that is about learning and young people and so forth. They shoot this week. They want me as one of the scientists on set and on camera. Sounds worthy, and maybe the type of reality TV that I would think worth doing. But so soon after returning? Not sure.

With all that and more to get off the ground immediately (not to mention two papers to write with some of my students), I must make sure that Madrid does not fade into a dream, and so I will spend time letting its smells, sounds, and tastes linger for a while. I see no point in living life in a blur, dashing from one thing to the next. So blogging a few things more about Madrid will be good for the lingering.

Keep an eye out.

-cvj